The Abyssal Heart
by Chris Walker
Summary: All his life has the elf Illfallow been wracked by an illness that has left his flesh pallid and body weak. Driven to despair, he decides to allow the ocean to take his life, only for his attempted suicide to attract a witness in the form of the naga Queen Azshara. Becoming quickly enamored with his unique visage, she chooses to save to him and drags him down to her undersea realm.
1. Chapter 1: A Queen's Whim

Queen Azshara had lived a long and remarkable life.

For the vast majority of her existence was Azshara a creature of immortal beauty and power, surrounded by grandiose luxuries few individuals could dream of possessing for their own. She had erected an empire spanning the length of this planet in her youth, commanded the presence and allegiance of millions and owed fealty or rivalry to no one. Her main resource of study and focus into the world and vast cosmos yet to heed her call was the Well of Eternity, a font of unlimited fable, magics and mysteries whether hers to know alone or still to fall into her grasp; the shining, glittering gem of Azshara's kingdom taking the shape of a majestic arcane pool. This was a time where she did as she willed and few voices stood in the way to hinder her demands.

Alas, times did change and points of view had a tendency to succumb to that effect. Azshara had witnessed this fact of life first hand, when her empire was at its glorious apex. Delving her mind into her Well of Eternity, she had born witness to an entity of unparalleled strength. He requested her aid in entering Azeroth from the Well, calling himself the titan Sargeras. Azshara, sensing this great power emanating from him, power so similar to hers and with potential to forever change Azeroth to an image of perfection befitting its empress, did as he wished, inviting him and his armies to her realm.

And so the titan's minions, demons and fiends of all breeds, entered on a river of fel-fire and blood. By tooth, claw, fist and sword they slaughtered what kaldorei resisted their entry and purpose, sparing no malefactor or innocent in their mission to enact their master's will. To see her people perish in so brutal a fashion was something Azshara witnessed in utmost sorrow, but she knew their sacrifices all assuredly necessary for the new world to be born, or so she suspected. Her people though, the impudent, petulant masses they were, rose up against her as one defiant voice and cast out the titan, his demons and influence in one fateful stroke, at a cost so unimaginably horrific that Azshara could scarcely comprehend it even as she saw it occur before her.

Change could at times prove to be a bitter truth. While that fact stood, some things had the will to refuse change's demands. Even as her first empire fell to ruin all around her at the hands of her inane, rebellious subordinates, even as she was banished beneath the sea at the sight of the Sundering of her Well of Eternity, Azshara the Vainglorious commanded the adoration of what people who still remained by her side. Even as her form and the forms of her myriad of loyal subjects mutated into that of the serpentine, sea-dwelling naga they now were, their love for her was absolute and her pride undeniable.

Where once was an empress of the land, ruler of Azeroth itself, now drifted an indomitable Queen of the Sea. Her newfound power secured by a pact with an ancient, eldritch entity, all the oceans of this world held sway to her grasp. All tides paid their tithe to her, all vassal creatures their tributes. By her treacherous former subjects' betrayal she had traded one life for another, and as one to make the most of any given situation, she regretted it not.

And yet, for her lack of regret, it was not enough. Still she hungered. Still she wanted for more. Ever did she want for more, yearn for far greater things to claim for her own. But if she did take them, and she often did, such trinkets would satiate her immortal hunger only briefly. She could have risen from her domain eons ago to crush the pitiful, twisted skeleton that remained of her former, fractured empire, and she knew in her heart of hearts that it would never be enough.

Impatient as she often was, Queen Azshara summed up an incredible resistance for this one goal, this one objective to wait for her true prize to present itself. She fasted her appetite for this one ultimate accomplishment, waiting for a proper moment, ripe and ready to be plucked, to present itself. Her arcane majesty ever at her disposal, she often spied upon the masses dwelling on the land, hoping to see that which she sought finally emerging, whatever it was destined to be. What she saw, more often than not, were but children. Nations of simple children, waging their insipid means of warcraft upon one another for fickle purposes, building and destroying things at a flick of a wrist and a blink of an eye. Sometimes it was amusing to bear witness to, to see all that blood wasted and horrors enacted with every passing day, but more often was it not.

Azshara only fleetingly chose to get involved in these paltry battles and pathetic skirmishes, for if she did, what would happen if her true prize manifested while her gaze was held elsewhere? Azshara far preferred to let her people and pawns do the duty of reminding the ungrateful world that its true mistress was alive and well, only occasionally letting a finger or two of her direct involvement bless their missions. She saw her people rise and fall in these conquests of the surface many a time. Yet they, or anything done by the mortal folk above had yet to yield anything worthwhile.

The queen's surprise, then, was something astounding and fierce when she observed one such trinket finally fall into her domain. And it was all by accident and chance that it had done so.

Upon one still day spent reclining in the seat of her power, Queen Azshara was mustering but a fraction of her godlike power to observe the happenings of the mortal world above. Where she had sent her errant gaze first was the storming sea neighboring the hated lands of Darnassus, and there she witnessed a lone shape fall into the choppy brine from a vessel constructed of wood and metal. The ship abandoning it, that lone shape itself was nothing special—it was a weak and sickly thing doomed to perish in the cold ocean's grasp, or so she first thought.

By chance, Azshara chose to focus on this entity. Her curiosity was piqued truly when she realized just what this entity was. It was an elf, a night elf, and he had leapt into the uncaring sea by his own admission. As the powerful waves threw him about like a straw doll and soon began dragging him under, Azshara witnessed the despair shining with clarity in his strange, _pink_ eyes—a color natural to him and wholly unique among his people. As was his flesh, showing as palest white, his long hair as well. He was indeed a unique creature, young and filled with a life all his own, and now he was soon to die, as he seemed to wish.

But Azshara could not- _would_ not permit that. He had given up his own life, thrown it to the sea like a rock from the shoreline, but as it stood that life was in _her_ hands now. And by the all-spying eyes of N'Zoth the Corruptor, she would not let him slip betwixt her fingers so easily!

With purpose and preternatural speed, Queen Azshara departed from Nazjatar. A minute had passed and a hundred thousand miles traversed when the naga demigoddess finally reached her quarry. By that point the sea had devoured him and he had sunk low, far beneath the choppy, storming waves above him and her. His body had become prone and muscles relaxed, his pale pink eyes now dull and lifeless. Death was at his doorstep, that was plain to see.

Death though, as Azshara decreed by virtue of her incontestable will, was not fated to come for him this day. She focused but a measly fraction of her arcane might. With one small nod of her regal crown, her spell was cast.

The effects of her spent magic were immediate. As small portions of the interior of the elf's body started to change, the flesh about his neck began to shift to accommodate them. A second later the areas had split into several serrated lines, all horizontally positioned beneath the other starting just behind the jaw and ending midways down his neck. Filamentous strands, short and fibrous like tiny feathers, protruded from these cracks as they formed and expanded, intaking water the moment they opened.

And so Azshara's spell concluded. Now blessed by her own hand with gills and the necessary lungs to ingest the salty brine of the depths, the elf unleashed a long gasp; perhaps the longest he had ever given in his short life. Bubbles scattered from his mouth in thick abundance as they expelled the remaining air within his body, clustering together as they fled for the surface above that he had forsaken by his own admission. His dull pink eyes gained a vivid texture that came with life, and they closed. No longer chained by death's clutches, he drifted about loosely in the current. Azshara drifted with him, looking over his thin, sinewy shape all the while. She approached him in one swift movement, locking her many arms around his thin frame, holding him close and feeling his soft flesh against hers.

The moment she touched him the naga queen felt something had never before experienced. The second his skin touched hers, she felt something sharp enter her. It pervaded her entire being, reaching for her soul and took deep root. It warmed her, her flesh ever so cold from the many ages spent in the cold dark below. A single, incredible thought screamed through her head by its lone self as she registered this sensation, this wonderful sensation.

Was this creature the treasure she had been waiting to acquire for so long?

Azshara knew not for certain, but her endless hunger longing to be sated more than anything, she chose to believe it to be so. She held him in her embrace for a time, resting her head upon his shoulder as she felt him adapting to his environment. She felt his chest heave with ever heavy breath he swallowed, and she adored it. Only when she sensed him stir did she pull herself back, to both look at him as he awakened and to let him know of just who it was who had spared his life.

The elf regained consciousness at a sluggish pace. The two luminous pink spheres that were his eyes opened slowly, still yet to retake their true sight. When they steadied and gained awareness, they witnessed Azshara first and focused upon her at once.

For a minute he stayed like this. His expression was calm stillness, at first. Soon it became realization, and in a fraction of the time he took to reawaken that realization turned quickly to shock. Azshara grinned as she saw him quiver in a startled display, all too clearly tasting the wonderful surprise in his queer pink eyes. When his shock ripened into something resembling fear, the wise and just queen chose to comfort him.

"Fear not, little elf," she hushed in her beautiful voice, running her fingers through his silky hair as it flowed freely in the water, white as snow as every long thread was. "You are safe and you are well. I, Queen Azshara, have rescued you. And the sights I plan to show you are numerous and spectacular..."

Those inviting words struck the elf in a different manner than intended. Disbelief and horror now entered his bony visage. As soon as he was able he opened his mouth in response to scream. No sound fled his maw, only what few remaining bubbles of air he still clung to. It was by Azshara's touch that he could now breathe beneath the waves, but she had yet to permit him capability of speech.

Unexpected as the reaction was, it did not dampen what emotion the naga queen felt toward him. Sifting her fingers from his head to the base of his skull, she took firm, but fair hold and steadied him. Bringing her her face close, her mouth locked locked on to his. She passionately kissed this elf, this unique and frail creature, and she deeply appreciated what new experiences he had to offer.

His taste was decidedly sweet. Azshara _treasured_ sweet things. So gratifying a quality as that was a rarity both coveted and despised in the bitter, salty depths of the sea. Her hand continued holding his head motionless in place, motionless against hers, her mouth avariciously craving more of the splendid, heavenly ambrosia his soft lips offered and unwilling to be denied. He tried struggling against her superior might, tried to wrench himself free of her cold grasp as it ensnared him in a multitude of arms and tentacular appendages, but it was all futile.

And it was all too much, it seemed. His resistance eventually waned, not out of acceptance, but from exhaustion. He shuddered one final time. His eyes rolled slowly to the back of his head, closing once more as his body again fell still.

Only when Azshara saw what had happened with her many eyes did she finally choose to end her kiss. She pulled herself back to observe him in full detail. He had again passed out; this time it was his emotions that had overcoming his senses, forcing his sickly form to react in the only way it thought best. For his weakness, Azshara only smiled. Such a thing was to be expected after all. For a sickly, melancholy mortal elf of the land to be rescued from certain death and fall into the bewitching embrace of the illustrious queen of the naga herself would come as a hefty surprise, to him or to any sane creature. And some creatures were simply incapable of handling the presence of the divine for too long.

With her catch safely in her clutches, Queen Azshara began her long venture back to the abyssal depths from whence she had emerged. The light grew weaker as she entered depths so strong in their weight that they could crush what fools dare traipse here unpermitted. Soon blackness, the all-consuming void it was, overcame her sights and the last stretching fingers of light faltered and vanished.

Azshara would spare an occasional glance at her quarry as she carried him off to her cold dark underworld. Whether or not he was the object she had been yearning for for so long, this creature would regardless be an intriguing specimen to preoccupy her attention with, to say the least. Azshara knew this for certain, and as the queen of her people, a position held only by the wisest creature to dwell within the ocean of Azeroth, she was scarcely ever wrong. She did wonder how great a time it would take him to adapt to his new life in her Nazjatar, how terribly he would writhe and thrash about in his efforts to do so. She smirked at the image, but much more so were her thoughts held, bated and primed, on how well he would take to the reserved position of being her new consort.

Oh, how she wondered this...


	2. Chapter 2: The Pale Elf

_"I wonder what is to become of you, little Paledrift..."_

* * *

Illfallow's eyes opened lazily as a faint sound tickled his ears, provoking his unconscious mind from its rest. His sleeping body twitched where it lay comfortably prone, feeling coming back into it. He soon yawned, sighing dryly and turning over until he faced upward.

He did not see much aside from a blurred darkness his eyes were yet to adjust to. His wits still too dampened by his drowsiness, Illfallow turned over to his side and blinked several times, numbly wondering about one simple topic that his bleary mind could focus on as it shed its mental lethargy.

What he heard, what had surely awoken him, was a voice he had never before heard in his life. Deep and reverberating, clear as day and utterly unfamiliar. Yet what it had said was already becoming lost to him, fading like a dream. Just the sound, just the pitch of its voice stayed. Illfallow's splayed arms moved closer inward, his hands and fingers curling over the surface of where he lay, itself apparently soft and pliable to his weary mind.

His mind became more alert by the time he had the fortitude to sit up. His entire frail body felt a lingering soreness wash over him, troublesome but pleasant in a way. Only now did he realize what he currently reclined upon was something cushioned. Looking down, his drowsy eyes recognized that what he lay on was a great silken sheet, as white in texture as his skin. Soon he knew it was draped over a bed, a sizable one, a sea of white. Illfallow took this moment to realize he himself was wearing nothing, save the worn leather trousers he recognized as his own. After finishing this analysis of where he sat, his gaze fell to the rest of this room he found himself in.

This room indeed did not disappoint his sight, not one bit. Illfallow found himself blinking multiple times as he took in all there was to be had by view alone. Just the walls that surrounded him were of an appearance he never witnessed before in his life. Standing many dozens of meters from one side of the room to the other and standing high, so high that any person of any class, privilege or power to stand before them as he did would feel small and unimportant in their presence, they showcased nothing short of something regal their quality. In sharp and near scathing contrast to the colorless white of his coverings, these walls were born by an almost foreboding host of dark textures, their flawless surfaces crafted completely of blue-green stones and minerals that reflected like the gloaming sky at dusk's end off the surface of a sea's shallows. Outlining them were jagged extensions of brass and bronze, massive gemstones of rich midnight textures embedded in their surface that twinkled with unmistakable arcane energies. The glow of these energies lit the room in a dim light of a similar color.

Behind the bed was a great oval window, it's view showing off a blank field of pure azure; less like the heavens, and more akin to the endless blue dwelling beneath the ocean's waves. Before the bed's front were a set of steps that led down to what appeared from this distance as a living area, the sides of it beset by curving marble railing. On a closer note, numerous pedestals stood around his bed in a fashion that would not be unfounded in the likes of an art gallery, all constructed of either wood or bone and bearing the color of the latter. Each one possessed unusual trinkets of perplexing elliptic geometries or statues of humanoid objects warped and bent out of shape until they had a posture more bizarre than anything a live person of any race or talent was capable of performing. Lastly of note was a dressing table, resting at the leftmost corner of his part of the chamber. Sitting tall and dignified and crafted entirely of smooth jade, it stood several feet from the bed itself. From that very same bed where Illfallow still sat marveling he could see intricate patterns etched into the fine edges of its precious green surface, each and every fantastic symbol resembling a mystic rune of esoteric origin.

For all the utter awe that held Illfallow, it did not remove a lingering sense of worry that slowly welled up within him. It grew in its magnitude until he could ignore it no longer. Wherever he was, he certainly did not belong. That worry grew into confusion when he realized something most foul that occurred before he somehow arrived at this fantastic location. The last vivid memory that was still his to remember of recent times was his fall.

When Illfallow fell from his boat to the violent sea, he did so with the intention of never coming out again. Alive, anyhow. With utmost clarity he remembered the choppy black waters greeting him as he made the plunge. He remembered being consumed by the savage waves, sinking into the turbulent brine after they finished relentlessly throwing him around, cool seawater entering his lungs. Darkness overcoming his sight until a feeling like calm sleep took hold of him, and he willingly fell to its siren song.

And he saw a figure. Disturbed from his slumber, Illfallow had somehow again regained his vision to spy it—a figure like something from a nightmare. It was far too alien, too surreal to possibly have been nothing more than imagined. What details he could actually remember was witnessing a female, elvish face both beguiling and horrid closing in on his. Five eyes had stared at him from that one face, some set within dark sockets upon the fore of a chitinous crown and others bound by fair teal flesh, all equally red and bright as burning, hellish coals.

But that was all the description that separate vision, real or otherwise, produced. The rest was muddled in an inky murk he could not see through. So many questions with no answers present to solve them... it was overwhelming. Sitting just a little more laxly and inhaling a deep breath of the cold air, Illfallow scratched the back of his neck, still trying to make sense of his vision and everything else going on right now...

...And a sharp sting surged through him. Illfallow retracted his hand as as though something had bitten it, his mind lighting up in a brief flash of red. He grunted, surprise still holding him over the severity of this unexpected sensation. As soon as he felt that ephemeral twinge of agony fade away, one more question came to the fore of his thoughts. Swiftly deciding it held a much more important, immediate place in his line of scrutiny, he abandoned his current questions to discover an answer to this one.

Where did it come from? What pain he experienced almost caused him to jump, but it did not plague his entire form. Just one part of him, he soon realized. His neck. Illfallow raised his hands to tap at either side of his neck, but lightly so. Indeed, where he cautiously touched he felt only tender flesh, sore and burning.

Yes, so it was from his neck. That much Illfallow discerned. But... there was something else at work. Something else had happened. A primal sort of fear now placed its grip on Illfallow. An urge overcame him, a dire need to see what it was that left this neck with this strange agony.

He crawled from his seat on this massive bed, setting his bare feet to the ground below it, and it was like stepping on a giant block of pure ice. Hard and cold, the floor was just shy of unbearable to tread upon, and yet it was not at all enough of a deterrent to stop the kaldorei from his goal. Without so much as wincing, Illfallow searched this vast room for a tool he could use to examine himself. He looked to the many pedestals, to the collection of objects they had, but saw nothing that could help him. It was here that he spied again that jade dressing table. There was something resting on its surface he thought for certain he could use.

Approaching it at a cautious pace, hampered partially by his numbing feet slowly getting used to the icy sensation that graced them with every step he made, he saw it was a mirror that he spotted. A hand mirror laying face up, and one of exceptionally exotic design. It had a scaled body forged of polished silver, a series of sapphire teardrops encrusted in an intricate pattern all around it. The reflective glass itself that gave the tool its use showed as a fine, clear circle, like an undisturbed pool of fresh water. Snatching it up in his hands, Illfallow brought it to his face by the ornate handle and gazed into it. He expected to see something perturbing at the very least. This paranoia was rewarded when what he saw truly startled him.

His face seemed to resemble its usual self, but as he suspected, something had occurred in his neck region. Right off he found himself staring at a set of markings... strange markings, taking shape as a series of vertical lines. Long in length, a reddish hue protruded at their edges, indicating flesh had parted there at some recent point. Briefly feeling something ill caress his senses upon the discovery, Illfallow thought that what he was seeing were a series of fine and thin, but no less terrible gashes.

Illfallow had an answer, but his prying did not end there. Something still did not sit right about this somehow, about the way these "gashes" seemed. He took a closer look, dreading something far more amiss was at play here. And so he did find something more. Instead of these mars being brought on by surgical mutilation, he came to the realization that they were not injuries at all. The way they appeared so neat, the manner by which they rested. They were... they were gills.

_Gills?_

One trembling hand still holding the mirror, Illfallow brought his other back to his neck. Ignoring the singeing pain it brought him, he caressed a careful finger across where one set of the apparent organs started behind the right side of his jaw, to near where they stopped midways down. They flared at his touch, briefly revealing their red interior and the white-pink filaments that they contained.

Illfallow's mouth dropped slightly. A sick feeling entered his gut, and there it stayed. Witnessing his flesh perverted into something else stung worse than his touch. So much worse. Something insidious had happened to him. Whether before he has passed out or while he slept, he could not tell. And that dream... that dream and the strange fiend in it... it was no dream at all, was it?

"Ah. I see you have finally awoken."

A voice had broken through the otherwise silent ambiance surrounding the unsettled elf. It was low and gravelly but feminine, bearing a noticeable hint of some kind of accent he could not recognize in the second it graced him. In his surprise over the intrusion, Illfallow dropped the mirror and it clattered back to the jade surface from where it lay prior.

A figure had entered the chamber, and it stood currently at the bottom of the stairs the bed area overlooked on powerful snakish coils. An intricate breastplate of gilded metal covered her chest as two mighty pauldrons rested upon her shoulders, the latter linked to the former by a series of gossamer chains. Three sets of arms emerged from the pauldrons, each one long and lithe, gauntlets of gold coming to their wrists which themselves ended in thin hands bearing long black claws. Two other items forged of similar aureate materials sat on either side of her head like simple bands meant to hold hair in place. Just these aspects of the entity's grim form was fierce enough to let a terrible dread fall over him, but what Illfallow found his heart almost stopping in place in sheer terror from were her eyes.

Sitting beneath long black brows homogeneous to Azeroth's elvish races, this creature's eyes were pale biting blue. Less were they eyes and more were they two orbs of pure ice, glassy and cold in their view, outlined by several distinct layers of blue that waxed in tandem to the intensity of the gelid color closer to the center. Both of these orbs were split in two in the middle by one thin pupil each. Reptilian in appearance and black in color, they were like two slivers of pure darkness given shape. And set in a permanent glare, these eyes stared at Illfallow and only him, utterly predatory and malefic in spite of their unblinking stillness.

It was a naga—Illfallow knew this right off, even in the low indigo light given by the arcane fixtures from above. If it wasn't the legless, serpentine figure of the entity that gave it away it was the fins and other assorted piscine features it possessed. The naga were monstrous fiends of the sea, cruel and spiteful of spirit and the greatest of nemeses to the kaldorei. Not only was it a naga, but it was one with a bed of live, ebony, serpentine creatures residing upon- _protruding_ from her crown. It was no ordinary ocean demon. It was something so much worse...

Illfallow stood there gawking in disbelief for an entire minute. It was during that minute that the naga, the sea witch it was, had chosen to approach him, moving with a supernatural grace in her slithering stride halfway up the stairs leading to him. As soon as his good sense returned to him, Illfallow's pink eyes searched the room for something he could use to defend himself, anything at all. His view fell to one of the pedestals standing nearby, a statue upon it crafted of shining platinum. At once he went for it, breaking into a clumsy sprint. His hands were yet to get close enough to reach for it when the imposing shape of the sea witch slid in front of him with an impossible speed, halting his advance.

His one opportunity lost, Illfallow could only stand there as the naga loomed above him. "Please," she hissed quietly down to him instead of attacking, "do not be alarmed, young elf. This entire affair may come as a surprise, but I seek not to harm you. Heed my words and return to your bedside before you do something you will indubitably regret."

Illfallow took a single step back, only now seeing how greatly the already-imposing creature towered over him. "Why should I believe that?" he yelled, a burst of unexpected courage making the words slip from his mouth. Taking another step backward he almost actually slipped, but just barely kept his balance.

The naga _tsked_ thrice and tilted her head, the serpents residing atop her crown in place of hair flickering their forked tongues out in a slick display of ebon flares. "Had it been our desire, you would not be alive now, much less here in so luxurious an abode," she chittered, one of her six hands motioning to his surroundings. "I myself could end you here and now with but a thought. I could freeze this very air that you have the pleasure of breathing; I could so easily summon a hail of ice from it and eviscerate you in a slew of bolts, if I so chose."

"A-and why don't you?" Seeing now that she was herding him to the bed, Illfallow ceased his retreat and stood tall. Before she could answer that question, another worked its way into the sickly kaldorei's mind. "Are you going to _torture_ me, then? Is that it?"

The creature's brow lowered, something unamused, impatient and cynical taking over her predatory visage. "I had ample opportunity to examine your body as my fellow handmaidens carried you here, elf. You could not survive torture from any of my siblings or I for more than a minute, if we so chose it. And regardless, I doubt a lowborn thing like you would hold anything of value in that white-haired head of yours..."

The naga's expression lightened somewhat at she spoke. "Please," she implored, four hands coming to her chest, their fingers tenting together, "return to your bedside and relax your senses. I have come here only to properly dress you."

Illfallow did not move. He only looked at the naga, the dreaded creature it was. He knew she saw the distrust in his eyes, and what she said next proved it. "If any of us had wanted to, we would have killed you already," she reminded him. "See reason in my words and calm yourself. I do not think it wise to present yourself as a shoddy wreck before our lady."

When Illfallow's expression turned from fearful to passive confusion, the naga rose her head high with a huff. She turned about, slithering to the dress table without another word. When she had reached it she caused several drawers to silently slide open with a casual wave of her hand. With another, out came several garments, drifting through the air on invisible currents. All were folded neatly fabrics. Orbiting the creature that had brought them forth, from there the naga's chore began.

Illfallow saw her perform this mundane act of magic with significant worry. He heard what she said about her magical capabilities. The whole speech she gave about ice and having death greet him in the form of a dozen frozen spikes thrown his way did not sound entirely appealing. While he kept watching her sift through these garbs he walked backwards to his bed. The moment he felt himself bumping into it he abruptly sat down, appreciating the small comfort of its soft surface.

"Who even are you? Why am I here?" he demanded to know, after a minute passed. He looked about again, at the walls. They were all so finely chiseled out of dark minerals and metals that naturally glistened with the splendid shine of the night sea beneath a full moon. Only now did it seem so much more malefic and dread-inspiring to him. "Wh... where even _is_ 'here?'"

"'Here,' meek little elfling, is Nazjatar; capital domain of the naga and the single most illustrious kingdom in all of Azeroth." The creature spoke this proudly as she still sorted through the wares, carefully singling out what pieces she thought might prove tasteful and discarding the rejected ones back to where they came with but a flick of one of her six wrists. "If you wish for specifics, this place where you now reside is our queen's Eternal Palace. And the Eternal Palace is the single most magnificent pearl in all the seas and oceans, that I promise you."

Illfallow blinked, recognizing the name of the fabled capital city of the naga, his heart sinking lower with every second that traipsed by. He was unsure of how to react to this information, unsure of how or where to dissect it at. The naga seemed to register his silence as a nod for her to continue on, and so she did. "And as for your other questions," she huffed. "You are here because our queen saw something of value in you; of what, I know not, nor is it my place to inquire. And I am a daughter and handmaiden to her, our proud and beautiful queen. You may call me Lady Y'sahj."

Of all the naga stated, Illfallow found himself focusing on one word more than the others: that mention she made to her "queen." He had a suspicion as to who this creature was referring to, as a matter of fact he all but knew who it was somewhere deep down, but he wanted confirmation. "Who... is this queen of whom you speak? Her name, I mean."

The sea witch, this _Lady Y'sahj_, glanced over her shoulder at the elf. Her stare was an icy, baleful thing soaked with visible content. "Queen Azshara," she spoke in a loud, revering whisper. "The most beautiful creature to ever have graced the land and sea of this harsh world. The ruler of all naga and all creatures that swim in the all the ocean and its many seas. Formerly she ruled over your people, the kaldorei, before your ungrateful, lowborn kin betrayed her and her highborne. Before your kind shattered the continent and cast us all out into the harsh sea."

She turned back to her work, intent on finishing the last portion of her task. Illfallow was silent, feeling somehow colder. He drew his limbs inward, bringing his feet to the mattress and knees to his chest and hugging them with his arms in his search for warmth. It was all but clear that he had no more immediate questions to give the sea witch, but Y'sahj had not yet finished her speech.

"Personally," the naga hissed as her work concluded, her tone low and quiet as she permitted a small dribble of venom to seep through her counterfeit smile, "I see little reason why our queen would take on a meek little freak like yourself. Weak of stature and mind, sickly in shape, a loathsome _albino._ Ridiculous..."

For her cruel words and his hopeless situation, Illfallow scarcely reacted to the thinly masked and all too blatant antagonism. He knew what he was. He had been like this since he was young. He had endured all the hardships it brought him as best as he could have, and then some. Be that as it was, there was again one phrase in her speech stuck out to him.

"Take me on?" he spoke, his voice light and monotonous. "What does... what does she seek to take me on for?"

Lady Y'sahj had apparently finished her task by the time Illfallow chose to speak. She turned to directly face him, her fake little grin growing into a wide sneer while some of the dark serpents upon her skull showed off their small hooked fangs. "Questions, questions. I do not think I'll answer this one."

She started slithering his way again, folded white garments of some kind resting in her foremost pair of hands. "If you'll kindly permit me to dress you, you may ask our queen yourself, kaldorei. She is expecting your presence soon. It would be a grave error to leave Her disappointed, would it not?"

Allowing his limbs to unbend, Illfallow looked to the clothes she held, then to the stern face of the naga herself. He weighed his few options with a heavy heart, sighing with equal parts dejection and unwavering unbelief. So many more thoughts were spinning through his head. Spinning, spinning, never halting for more than a second. It was a maelstrom.

He was trapped within the folds of an eldritch palace belonging to a people with a predilection for evil earned through the expanse of countless centuries. He had no manner of escape, no tricks to fall back on. He was simply here, in a location as foreboding as it was splendid that dwelt, as the view of the window behind him truly revealed, under the ocean itself. He was a prisoner to a monstrous individual straight out of myth whose legendary vanity and pride was responsible for bringing the kaldorei civilization crashing down thousands of years ago.

He had no hope. And there was only way to get a proper grip on his situation. One, terrible way he still could scarcely believe was a grim reality he was due to face, if what this creature before him said was true.

Illfallow stood up with a despondent sigh and permitted the creature to do as she willed.


End file.
